ABSTRACT This essay examines the rhetoric of peace as a central communicative strategy in authoritarian and fascist regimes, arguing that peace is repeatedly redefined to legitimize violence, territorial expansion, and political domination. Drawing on rhetorical theory, critical cultural studies, and intercultural communication, the analysis compares fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and contemporary Russia to show how leaders from Mussolini and Hitler to Putin frame aggression as protection, conquest as restoration, and war as moral necessity. Through concepts such as spazio vitale, Lebensraum, and Russia’s “special military operation,” peace becomes not the absence of violence but its rhetorical twin. The paper further introduces the Br/Other dynamic to explain how affective intimacy and Othering enable coercion to appear benevolent, particularly in Russia’s discourse on Ukraine. By tracing historical continuities and contemporary adaptations, this study demonstrates how language functions as a second front of authoritarian power and calls for reclaiming peace as an ethical, dialogic, and communicative practice.

The transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was not merely institutional, but a moral reckoning with totalitarian legacies. In Poland, this reckoning remains incomplete, as unresolved property restitution—compensation for cultural assets seized by Nazi Germany and nationalized after the Second World War—continues to shape public policy and identity. This article argues that Poland's post-1989 heritage discourse instrumentalizes cultural loss and victimhood to consolidate domestic political agendas rather than to advance genuine cultural justice. Through an analysis of legal acts, policy instruments, and official statements, it demonstrates how the state constructs a collective narrative of national victimhood that often marginalizes individual experiences and their claims to the recovery of cultural loss. The absence of comprehensive restitution laws and Poland's failure to honour Holocaust-related commitments expose this moral contradiction. Moreover, the victim narrative distorts heritage funding priorities, reinforcing state memory politics. The article calls for reframing heritage discourse towards accountability and inclusive restitution policies.

This text outlines the process by which Jewish members of the College of Physicians in Vienna (Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien) were disenfranchised and excluded subsequent to Austria's annexation to the German Reich (euphemistically called the Anschluss) in March 1938. At the beginning of 1938, 60% of the members and about one third of the board were of Jewish origin. The provisional director, Adolf Irtl (1867-1947), along with members of the Medical Faculty at the University of Vienna and the Nazi Party, discussed how to deal with and expel the Jewish members. Their membership rights were restricted from the outset. Following the Anschluss, the College of Physicians retroactively demanded "unpaid membership fees" from Jewish members, threatening their already precarious financial situation. In February 1939, the Medical Society of Vienna (Wiener Medizinische Gesellschaft) was founded as aNazi replacement organization. Jewish members were no longer accepted. As part of the project "History of the College of Physicians in Vienna: the critical years 1930-1960", the names of all those who were expelled for antisemitic or political reasons have been documented. Some of these victims are presented here as examples.

Following a brief recap of the life of the entomologist Erich Schmidt (1890–1969), this paper examines his short tenure at Alexander Koenig’s Natural History Museum in Bonn. Using archival records, the reasons for his premature dismissal are discussed, as well as his role during National Socialism and the resulting consequences for the establishment of the Alexander Koenig Foundation (AKS). Explosive letters from the Bonn City Archives are reproduced to demonstrate that high-ranking Nazi officials, including Bonn’s mayor Ludwig Rickert, NSDAP district leader Cuno Eichler, and Karl Chudoba, the rector of the university at the time, attempted to boycott the foundation’s establishment after the deaths of Alexander and Margarethe Koenig. Berthold Korf, the former senior taxidermist at the museum and a committed Nazi who had likewise been dismissed without notice by Alexander Koenig and later rose to become Bonn’s police chief, also played an important role in this matter. In their will, the Koenigs had designated the AKS as the sole heir to their remaining assets. These consisted primarily of the expected proceeds from the sale of their Blücherhof estate in Mecklenburg, near Waren (Müritz), valued at 3–4 million Reichsmarks. However, the sale did not proceed due to the war. Ultimately, Blücherhof was expropriated during the Second World War, and the AKS was not established until 1946, following the collapse of the Nazi regime. In accordance with the charitable intentions of its founders, the AKS continues to support the Museum Koenig in its diverse scientific endeavours to this day.

ABSTRACT In response to claims for cultural objects taken during the Nazi Era, museums may retain possession of objects, but display texts detailing their troubled histories. These act as markers of justice, indicating that a process of addressing and recognizing the potential injustice involving the object has been undertaken. It is argued that these texts – often taking the form of paratexts – instrumentalise the art, shifting it beyond the aesthetic. Adopting methods from law and literature this article establishes three lenses through which to analyse these texts, specifically: provenance; commemoration; and justification. It is argued that through the use of markers of justice, museums create communities who are seeking to recognize past wrongs and deal with past injustices. Yet, in so doing, the objects change from artworks to symbols of those past tragedies and their accompanying texts provide spaces in which museums can justify their continued possession.

Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contributions to Music in Iceland by Árni Heimer Ingólfsson (review)

Abstract This article explores how sportfishing became an instrument of the Nazi regime in integrating “Aryans” into the Volksgemeinschaft (racial or national community) through coercive measures and the promise of policies benefitting anglers. Most scholarship on the structure and function of sports in the Third Reich focuses on mass participatory sports or the 1936 Olympic Games. This article shows that leisure activities also played a significant role within the Nazi state and society, as authorities controlled who had access to outdoor spaces and waters, thereby defining who was included and excluded within this Volksgemeinschaft. Restricting access to fishing waters to only “Aryans,” Nazi policies were an important part of the “social death” of German Jews. Although new sportfishing opportunities for “Aryans” fell short of Nazi promises, conquests fed anglers’ desires of the East as a space of unbound recreation. In this sense, even recreational activities such as sportfishing were inextricably tied to larger Nazi policies of exclusion, war, expansion, and potential for plunder.

International criminal law has played a pivotal role in addressing atrocities, yet it has often failed to fully confront systemic discrimination against marginalized groups. The legacy of the Nuremberg Trials - widely recognized as the foundation for modern international justice - offers a striking example. Although the Roma were among those persecuted by the Nazi regime through internment, forced sterilization, and extermination, their suffering was notably absent from the indictments and legal narratives produced by the Tribunal.

Abstract Having witnessed the end-point of eugenics in the violent, state-sanctioned genocide of Nazi Germany, it is impossible to discuss racial categories today without the knowledge that racialization is a dehumanising process that can lead to devastating consequences. Yet in spite of a willingness to acknowledge that race is a social construction, it often continues to be treated in everyday life as a real categorical difference. This article explores the modern dynamic between whiteness and racialization, highlighting a relationship between the studied objectivity of the scientific gaze and the supposed neutrality or non-racialised identity of whiteness. The way in which race functions as a technology of control becomes evident through the analysis of two key novels: Passing (1929) by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen and The White Girl (2019) by Australian First Nations author Tony Birch. With their depiction of racial passing, both novels challenge received ideas about race and skin colour, exposing the face as an important site where the sumptuary codes of race play out. This article considers the racial masks that people wear and the relational implications of ancestry on people’s faces.

ABSTRACT Historians have long highlighted how Nazi Germany weaponised wartime tourism in occupied France for ideological purposes. Scholars often focus on the bimonthly German guide to the French capital Wohin in Paris: Der deutsche Wegleiter (1940-1944). This article broadens the scope by introducing a range of other tourism publications for German servicemen in France, North Africa, and the United States, including the Kleiner Führer durch Amerika produced as part of the U.S. re-education programme for German prisoners. The article argues that this peculiar genre of tourism literature was influenced by pre-war publications and therefore often inefficient in conveying ideological content in times of war. Instead, German servicemen valued these publications mainly as souvenirs and mementos of their long military journeys during and after the Second World War.

Nazi Germany started whaling in the Antarctic Ocean in 1936 as a result of its high dependence on fat imports and a shortage of foreign currency. While this was part of a policy geared towards self-sufficiency or autarky, whaling did not cut Germany off from the international links that characterise the global fat supply, but actually created new connections. The article sets out four new arguments. First, Germany never achieved self-sufficiency in whale oil or fat in general. Second, in the context of whaling, links to Norway remained strong. Third, the Anglo-Dutch Unilever group was a key player in German whaling. Finally, given the overexploitation of whale stocks, Germany and other whaling nations saw themselves compelled to engage in multilateral negotiations over the regulation of the industry. Fat thus remained a globalised commodity even in the 1930s. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

This article examines the classical architectural order as a material mechanism for ideological production and cultural identity construction in twentieth-century political systems. It analyzes the strategic appropriation of stable classical elements by power regimes to legitimize and spatially implement ideological programs. Architecture is not a passive symbol but active social practice, where ideological constructs materialize in spatial forms and are internalized through bodily and ritual experience of the monumental environment. The framework synthesizes dialectical methodology (Marxist tradition) with the Russian school's activity-based approach, interpreting architectural design as collective activity where ideology is objectified and reproduced. Conceptual enrichment integrates Saint-Girons' aesthetic theory of power and Benjamin's concept of the politicization of aesthetics to analyze visual strategies; Carey's ritual communication model to understand collective identity formation through spatial experience; and Derrida's deconstructivist method to uncover ideological hierarchies in architectural language. The empirical basis is a comparative analysis of three twentieth-century cases of ideological classicism: liberal democratic, fascist, and socialist models. The novelty lies in developing an interdisciplinary framework shifting focus from traditional art historical description to processual analysis of ideological production mechanisms in space. The study demonstrates that the classical order's effectiveness as a power instrument derives not from immanent formal properties but from the dialectic between structural stability and ideological fluidity, resolved in specific socio-historical practice of construction and ritual spatial appropriation. Comparative analysis reveals a universal operational mechanism for working with classical language across heterogeneous political systems through recoding, deconstruction of the original canon, and synthesis with new ideological programs. Monumental architecture functions as political mobilization technology, where aesthetic modes organize collective perception and transform abstract power order into lived, corporeal reality. The results open prospects for critically analyzing contemporary architectural practices in constructing national identity and substantiate architecture as integral to ideological production.

This study investigates, from a legal and historical perspective, the dense relationship between Art, Law, and Politics within 20th-century totalitarian regimes, specifically focusing on Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The research examines how the state apparatus usurped the artistic field for social engineering, employing Law as a normative and institutionalizing mechanism to dictate the forms and ideological functions of cultural expression. It discusses the role of collective passions — such as fear, pride, and hope — in shaping subjects devoted to the established order, thereby converting art into a tool for surveillance and ideological discipline. Through an interdisciplinary methodology, the paper demonstrates that the cultural policies of these regimes were supported by rigid legal frameworks and the allocation of public resources (Financial Law), turning aesthetic choices into fiscal and budgetary priorities. Ultimately, the study concludes that safeguarding artistic freedom and pluralism is vital for contemporary democracies, requiring a cultural law that protects aesthetic autonomy and a financial law committed to equity in the distribution of resources.

During the Nazi era, the Institute of Anatomy of what is now Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg received bodies from institutions involved in Nazi crimes. As the body register (Leicheneingangsbuch) from April 1933 to September 1946 is missing, the provenance of anatomical body procurement at Erlangen during this period and certain specimens within the anatomical legacy collection there have remained unclear. Archival material from municipal, state and national archives, university records, and the specimens themselves were examined. Primary sources were analysed to identify the scientific use of human remains from victims of National Socialism. Secondary literature was reviewed to contextualise findings within previous research. 391 people, whose bodies were brought to the Institute of Anatomy in Erlangen from 1933 to 1944, were counted, and for 323 of them names could be reconstructed. The bodies were delivered from hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, workhouses, and execution sites. Vulnerable groups - such as patients, forced labourers, and children - were affected. The Erlangen anatomical legacy collection contains 84 datable Nazi era histological specimens (1936-1942), including identifiable victims from Munich-Stadelheim prison. Personnel and institutional continuities existed after 1945. This study offers the first in-depth analysis of Erlangen's anatomical body procurement during National Socialism, documenting identifiable Nazi victims. Although the original body register is missing, the findings demonstrate the need for systematic provenance research across all macroscopic and microscopic holdings and case-based investigations of identified individuals. The study provides a foundation for further, interdisciplinary research into the provenance and ethical reassessment of the anatomical collection in Erlangen.

The article explores the role of language as a tool of modern Russian manipulative propaganda. It establishes that the language utilized by totalitarian regimes to shape an alternative reality is referred to as “Newspeak”, a term inspired by George Orwell’s novel “1984”. This artificial language serves the totalitarian system by creating a fabricated reality that benefits the propagandist. Modern Russian Newspeak is not a novel concept; while Orwell coined the term, the underlying idea predates him. Similar artificial languages were employed in the USSR and Nazi Germany to obscure the truth and conceal their crimes. Research indicates that the primary tactics for constructing Newspeak include altering the meanings of words, substituting concepts, stripping direct meanings from terms while reassigning new ones, and utilizing idiomatic expressions and bureaucratic language devoid of substantive information. The analysis demonstrates that contemporary Russian manipulative propaganda employs conceptual substitutions to advance its narratives toward Ukrainian, Russian, and Western audiences. This approach aims to obscure the truth, justify military aggression against Ukraine, downplay the severity of current events, and manipulate public sentiment within Russia. For instance, Russian propagandists refer to their war of aggression against Ukraine as a “special military operation,” characterize the seizure and occupation of Ukrainian territories as “liberation,” label the forced deportation of civilians from occupied areas to Russia as “evacuation,” and describe Ukrainians forcibly relocated to Russia as “refugees,” among others. The article also highlights the potential for future research to involve a comprehensive examination of contemporary Russian Newspeak in manipulative propaganda. This analysis could help in developing Ukrainian national counter-narratives and in conveying the truth to the world. Keywords: language, Newspeak, dialogicity, media, media text, Russian manipulative propaganda, concealment of truth, Den newspaper, full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, special military operation, cotton, refugees.

A thousand years separated the graduation of Doctor Shabtay Donolo, the first Jewish medical student to graduate from a medical faculty in Europe (Salerno, Italy) and that of Doctor Hans Friedenthal, one of the last Jewish medical students who received MD degrees in Berlin's medical faculty and who was appointed 15 years later as head of the Donolo Hospital in Tel-Aviv-Yaffa. The medical faculties in Italy and the Iberian Peninsula were the first institutes to accept Jewish students and Crypto-Jews in medicine. Some Jewish communities' assisted Jewish foreign students to overcome procedural restrictions, cultural and linguistic obstacles. Beside the up-to-date topics in medicine, the students also received extensive knowledge in sciences and philosophy. Some of them became famous physicians and scientists. The Netherlands faculties followed the Italian example and accepted students of the "New Jews" who returned to Judaism and those from different European countries. The faculties in Germany, England and France were the last institutes in Western Europe to accept Jews. From the beginning of the Nazi regime and wherever they expanded, the Jewish medical students were dismissed from the universities.

Anatomy in Nazi Germany-in its work with bodies of the regime's victims-is arguably the most extreme example of state-sanctioned abuse of power over bodies of the dead in medicine. This history is highly relevant today because it contributed to the formulation of basic tenets of research ethics in the Nuremberg Code and allows for history-informed reasoning regarding anatomical body procurement and education. However, detailed information on anatomy institutes in Nazi Germany and its territories is often missing. This study offers first results of an investigation of activities at Breslau anatomy 1933 to 1945 (today Wrocław), including anatomists' politics and anatomical body procurement. In 1945, this anatomical institute ceased to exist when Breslau became Polish. Like their peers throughout Nazi Germany, Breslau anatomists coordinated the handover of bodies of the executed from prison with the authorities. Archival documentation reveals that Breslau anatomy received bodies of at least 30 executed prisoners. In addition, the body register of the city morgue was examined, disclosing the transfer of 442 unclaimed bodies to the anatomical institute from 1937 to 1944, more than half of them children. Also among them were 29 bodies of prisoners and Eastern European forced laborers. All these bodies were used in anatomy education, and the executed were preferred in research studies and dissertation theses, as documented in 16 publications. These findings confirm the close collaboration of Breslau anatomists with the Nazi regime, and their acceptance of the use of Nazi victims' bodies as an unquestioned professional opportunity.

Abstract This essay examines the institutionalisation and professionalisation of the academic discipline of the history of medicine within German medical faculties over the last 120 years, with a view to facilitating comparisons with East Asian developments. It traces the evolution of the field through periods of specialisation, de-institutionalisation and interdisciplinary integration, exploring the productive tensions between its medical and historical dimensions. The unique German context is analysed, including the integration of medical history into university curricula and its pivotal role in the education of medical ethics, especially since the introduction of the subject “History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine” in 2002. Key phases of the development include responses to scientific medicine, post-war humanisation efforts and reckoning with medical crimes commited during the Nazi era (1933–1945). These have all contributed to the transformation of the discipline into a vital site for reflection and cultural memory. It is demonstrated how German medical historians have legitimised their academic niche, contributed to interdisciplinary discourse, and fostered coherence amidst growing thematic diversity. Ultimately, the German experience exemplifies the field’s role as a bridge between science and the humanities, offering essential orientation and critique for contemporary medical practice and education.

Abstract This article examines the negotiation of ethnopolitical categories in wartime Nazi Germany by analyzing Gestapo investigations into accusations of “friendliness to Poland” against German citizens of Polish descent in the industrial Ruhr conurbation. By relying heavily on denunciations and informing, the Gestapo incentivized ordinary Germans in the Ruhr to identify perceived “dangerous outsiders” to the Volksgemeinschaft . Some therefore relied on longstanding anti-Polish tropes to frame accusations in the racial categories of the Nazi state. But while many such accusations alerted the Gestapo’s attention, they frequently masked a pursuit of personal issues and presented officers with significant investigatory difficulties. Unlike the generally brutal treatment of ethnolinguistic minorities in Nazi Germany, Gestapo officers often did not simply employ blanket repression in these cases. They frequently considered accused individuals’ socioeconomic productivity and “commitment” to Germany, characteristics that defendants stressed, thus highlighting the often contingent, unstable process of ethnic boundary formation in Nazi Germany.

This study adds to the work on emancipatory/oppressive accounting by analysing the effect of the French influence on accounting systems in formerly colonised Francophone African countries. This study applies a comparative history critical approach to two cases: the French Accounting Plan of 1942 (in Nazi German-occupied France) and the Basic African Accounting System of Reference ( SCAR-B , the project of African accounting emancipation, following independence). The data comes from archival sources and 18 semi-structured interviews. The results show that the neo-colonial influence led to the failure of primitive attempts to domesticate African Francophone accounting systems. The failure of the 1942 French Plan was linked to the suspicion of collaboration with the Nazi German occupying authorities, which led to French autonomous accounting emancipation. In the African countries, the failure of SCAR-B led to their desire for empowerment, but maintained these countries in captivity. Both accounting break-out and sovereignty are essential for the emancipation and Africanisation of accounting to occur in Africa.